We all want to have enough money to live a comfortable life, yet often we are trading our most precious resource – time – for the cash that’s required to fuel that lifestyle. This can feel very frustrating, particularly if you’re stuck in the office or working away from home, whilst your kids are rapidly growing up before your eyes.

Similarly, you want to be the best parent you can be, and for most people their definition of this is to ensure they make time for their children. However, whilst your children crave your company and attention they also crave new toys, clothes and the trappings of secure, if not affluent, lifestyle.

The pressure of being a parent, in today’s world, is substantial. Today, kids want everything their neighbor has – from iPads to the latest sneakers, and all these material items come at a cost, but at the same time, there’s a social and emotional cost associated with not making the time required to enjoy family life.

In this article, we’re going to look at a number of ways to make money whilst ensuring you have enough time available to be a “good parent”.

THE INGREDIENTS

First off, let’s take a look at the ingredients required to make this happen. The first thing you’re going to need is money, as life without money is pretty tough, at the same time you are also going to need time. Therefore, we need to look at a different recipe that can achieve both time and money.

This means, we are looking at ways to generate passive income, which is income that is derived from creating assets or businesses that generate money without you having to directly trade your time for money.

Today, many parents are looking at home-based business opportunities and side hustles to provide the money they require whilst not being so time intensive, in terms of having to go to work each day. When you think about it, let’s say someone does eight hours per day with an average commute of one hour, each way, in total.

This equates to ten hours a day, or fifty hours per week. Consider the fact that, if you were to simply start working from home, you would save 2 hours a day, or 10 hours a week – time which could be much better spent interacting with your children.

In the vein of finding opportunities that provide a decent amount of money in addition to more free time, this article now presents a number of opportunities to consider:

SET UP A BUSINESS

The first option is to set up a home based business. This could be something small, akin to a side hustle, or something huge with massive growth potential. The reality, when it comes to business, is that with the right action plan anything is achievable, so there’s no need to think small. You need to start small – but this shouldn’t be confused with thinking small, as often it’s those with huge dreams that create very successful businesses that completely transform their family’s lives.

There are so many business opportunities out there, today, though the majority of parents like the idea of setting up a digital business that leverages automated marketing systems to create a freedom lifestyle – meaning their income generation is on ‘autopilot’.

In this sense, the one core skill you need to master is digital marketing, as once you understand the concepts of digital marketing you can start to generate revenue from various sources such as affiliate marketing (e.g. recommending products on your blog), selling physical products (e.g. Amazon or eBay), or selling information products (e.g. video training courses or how to guides).

NETWORK MARKETING

A lot of parents are intrigued by the concept of networking marketing, which is where you register as an independent distributor of a company then sell their products through the highly effective platform of relationship marketing.

The simplest way to think about this type of selling is to think of the last time you recommended a movie to watch at the cinema, a particular destination or hotel you stayed in, or a beauty product. Relationship marketing is more about “recommending” products than selling them, as in the most part, you are recommending products to your friends and family.

In this sense it helps if you believe in the products and have a positive personal experience of using them, otherwise, you might come across as trying to manipulate your friends into buying products from you that you receive a commission on.

With regard to the financial benefits, the industry average commission is 30-50% of the retail price. Therefore, if you are selling premium nutritional products, at $100 per month, you would expect to make around $30-$50 per customer. If you have just 10 customers that would be $300 – $500 per month, plus, in the case of nutritional products they are consumable – meaning you will have regular sales.

In addition to the basic sales commission, you can easily build a team of sales reps that you coach and train to develop their own relationship marketing business. This is where you can make a lot of money, and where the passive income aspect comes into play.

The company will pay you a ‘coaching bonus’ on the sales of the people that join your team and you train – this means, that your income can grow exponentially, as if you have 10 people in your business that each turn over $1,000 – you could expect to receive a coaching bonus in the region of 5%.

This would be 5% of $10,000. Admittedly, this would only be $500, but as your team grows, imagine if you had a group of representatives each turning over $1,000 per month – your business could quickly grow to the point you earn $5,000 per month… yet, as you are leveraging other people’s efforts, it is a form of passive income that isn’t contingent on you trading your time for money in the conventional way.

TRADE ONLINE

Many people love the idea of making money by trading stocks and shares, which, whilst risky can be hugely profitable. After all, imagine if you invested a few thousand dollars in Bitcoin a few years back!

Of course, it’s not as predictable or in your control as owning your own business, but it can be a good way to supplement your income.